A Midsummer's Mess
by Celestia Craven Genesis
Summary: Ten years in the future, Master Emyrs the Court Sorcerer saves a young noble and is forced to slip them through the fabric separating the different worlds. Ten years in the past, Uthur is enjoying his Midsummer Feast before Merlin falls unconscious and two strangers emerge from a magic portal.


**Disclaimer**: No, I do not own _Merlin_. Ridiculous.

**Published**: June 18, 2013

**Notes**: Face it, everyone has wanted to see Arthur faced with Merlin's awesomeness since the very first episode. Therefore, ladies and gentlemen, I present to you a Merlin from ten years later sent back in time to be his awesome self. Please read, tell me what you like (and what you don't!), what you think I can improve in my writing, etc. I love feedback!

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**Chapter One**

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"Merlin!" the crown prince shouted in dismay, covering his eyes as the curtains were pulled back.

"Up and at 'em, lazybones!" the crown prince's manservant chirped, eyes squinting shut with the force of his mischievous grin.

"Merlin," the crown prince grumbled, pulling his bedcovers over his head. "You should be taken into the main square and hanged for uncommon cruelty."

"Oh, but then you would be robbed of my cunning and wit," Merlin answered.

"At this point," Arthur said. "You can't even polish my armor without somehow causing a disaster."

Merlin threw a spare pillow at Arthur's head. "Hey!" the manservant complained. "It's not _my_ fault that I was attacked––by one of _your_ knights, I might add!––while working!"

"He thought you were a sorcerer!" Arthur said, as if that excused everything.

"And?" Merlin asked.

There was a moment of silence from the lump on the bed as Arthur struggled to think of anything to justify believing that Merlin was a sorcerer. Merlin was the annoying, clumsy, talkative servant that Arthur trusted with his life, most assuredly not a sorcerer. To put it plainly, Arthur thought that Merlin was a moron. The trickery of sorcery was simply beyond him.

Finding no comeback but unwilling to lose an argument, Arthur shouted, "Where's my breakfast?"

"Coming, coming!" the crown prince's manservant exclaimed, finishing setting the table with the morning's meal. "I have toast, bacon, and a collection of colorful fruits the names of which escape me. Royalty and their luxuries."

Arthur poked his head above the bedcovers and grumbled as he rolled out of bed, yawning. "Can you possibly be any more obnoxiously awake, Merlin?" he asked. "Some of us actually seem to need to _sleep_ in order to walk around."

"You'd have had much more sleep if you hadn't stayed up late looking over your the security measures for today's feast, Arthur," Merlin chastised.

"How did you know that?!" Arthur exclaimed.

"Oh, please," Merlin said, rolling his eyes and shaking his head. "If nothing else, you are utterly predictable."

Arthur was slowly turning red. "_Merlin_––" he started.

"––muck out the stables!" they chorused together, Merlin deadpanning while Arthur looked horrified.

"Told you," Merlin said as he left the room. "Utterly predictable."

Arthur glared at his bacon.

~ oOo ~

Merlin huffed as he placed the ridiculous servant's hat on his head. "Do I really have to wear this wretched thing?!" he asked Gaius.

Gaius smiled unsympathetically. "Look on the bright side, Merlin," he teased. "There is no possible way to get a fat head under that colorful monstrosity. It's too large for anything else to compare."

"Gaius. I keep eating the feather."

"Feathers are occasionally key ingredients to powerful potions," Gaius said, reaching for a bottle of seeds on the shelf and pouring a handful into a boiling pot.

"Gaius. The feather's orange."

". . . Theoretically, phoenixes _do_ exist and I'm sure that one has given a feather for a healing potion," Gaius said, stirring his herbal medicine with his large wooden spoon.

"Gaius. This is most certainly not a phoenix feather."

"Then I'm afraid you'll just have to suffer through it. It's only for the feast, and then you can put it away in your closet," Gaius said with a glare from under his bushy eyebrows. "Now stop bothering me and let me work!"

"Yes, Gaius," Merlin grumbled, shuffling away.

Merlin walked out of the Infirmary, twisting sideways so that his hat would fit through the door without knocking into anything. This, more than doing chores the hard way, was one of the worst parts of hiding his magic. Merlin could swear that the "traditional servants' garb" was specifically designed to mortify the servants into silence so that the members of the court fill the feasting hall with their own voices.

On second thought, that probably _was_ the point.

Merlin hated feasts. On the other hand, Merlin was rather fond of the day _after_ a feast, where the cook always slipped Merlin some of the leftovers to share with Gaius. He hoped that the nobles didn't eat all the cherry pie before he had a chance to get some.

~ oOo ~

"Just a little further," a man covered in a brown cloak murmured to his young companion, pulling her behind him as he watched yet another group of horsemen gallop across the path. "The veil between worlds is thin here––we should be able to find our way to a safe place for a little while."

His young companion was a girl of around fourteen years of age, clothed in a white dress with gold ribbon. Her blond hair reached to her waist, bangs tied back with a metal clasp whose design could not have been forged by human hands. Her face was pale with worry, blue eyes scanning her surroundings with fear as she held onto the hem of her companion's cloak.

"They've come for me," she said, looking down at her feet. "I should never have tried to look for you."

The man in the brown cloak tilted his head toward the girl, a smile emerging from the shadows hiding his face. "Oh, don't be like that," he said. "I haven't had this much excitement in ages."

The young girl huffed out a laugh at the unexpected response. "Yes, well," she said, "don't expect me to always bring along a small army of armed men behind me. You'll be terribly disappointed the next time I visit."

The man in the cloak grinned. "That's the spirit!" he said. He held her upper arm in his hand as he ran across the path into the forest on the other side. "We should get to the old oak in another five minutes or so. When I get there, I need you to be very quiet and stay very close. I can't worry about you and the spell at the same time."

"What if they find us?" the girl asked, leaves rustling under her feet as she tripped through the forest. "What then?"

The man in the cloak turned back for a moment to study her face, effortlessly dodging the branches in his path. His face made no noise on the forest floor, and his boots left no tracks behind him. "Well, we're mostly surrounded and they have quite a few sorcerers of their own. Our best bet is to hope they don't find us until I've finished the spell."

The girl's brow furrowed in concern, but she answered, "Yes, Master Emyrs."

A few minutes later, they came across a small clearing that was somehow separated from the rest of the forest. In the middle of the clearing grew an old, thick tree, limbs twisted together as if it were dancing.

"This is it," the cloaked man said to himself. He neared the oak tree and rested his hand upon its bark, offering his other arm for his young friend to grasp.

For a long moment, the cloaked man was silent. Then, words started to fall out of his mouth, faster and faster, until they merged together into one, unending word. In the shadows under his hood, his eyes glowed a bright golden color, unblinking.

The girl gasped in fear as she saw a group of horsemen charge into the clearing.

"They're coming!" she shouted, flinging herself closer to her companion.

Her companion's chanting didn't slow in the least. Just as an arrow narrowly missed them and a beam of ice followed close behind, the cloaked man pulled the girl to his chest protectively and shouted the last syllables of his spell.

The beam of deadly ice rapidly grew in the mirrors of their eyes, and then there was an explosion of some kind and the pair knew nothing more.

~ oOo ~

Uther stood up, looking down at the people below him as he began his speech.

"People of Camelot," Uther said. "Through the recent years, our lives have all been besieged with hardship. Many have tried to attack us, but we have remained strong! We sit here, feasting on the food that our hard work has provided, while they remain outside these walls, looking upon our good fortunes with envy and hatred . . ."

Uther paused.

"In the years to come, we must become even stronger. Those outside our walls look for our weaknesses even now. The sorcerers will attack us and weave their spells. We cannot allow magic to rein free!"

The very foundation of the castle creaked, and the walls shuddered. Arthur and his knights jumped up from their places in hall, reaching for their swords.

"What's happening?!" Uther shouted.

Standing at his place by the crown prince, Merlin's eyes went glassy and he stumbled. "Arthur," he whispered, before falling forward.

"Merlin!" Arthur shouted, catching his manservant in his arms and lowering him to the floor. "Merlin! Can you hear me?"

There was a flash of light brighter than the sun itself, reaching to every corner of the hall. All of the people of Camelot turned their faces away and covered their eyes, vision momentarily black in the face of the blinding radiance.

Then the light was gone. Silence shrouded the hall as the people tried to make some sort of sense of what had just happened. Slowly, people raised their heads and uncovered their eyes, rubbing the throbbing organs and blinking rapidly.

Soon, everyone was looking at the center of the hall, at a pile on the floor. Fingers pointed and whispers broke out amongst the members of the court. A girl in noble clothing was held protectively to the chest of a man completely covered by the folds of his brown traveling cloak.

The pair of intruders were motionless for a moment, unconscious. Then the girl's eyes fluttered and she looked up at the ceiling with a frown. She placed an arm on the floor and pushed her body upwards.

She looked at the hall around her with puzzled eyes, holding her skirt in her hand as she gathered her feet under her and stood up with a slight stumble. Pushing out her hands for balance, she looked down at her feet and caught sight of the man in the cloak still lying on the floor.

Her eyes widened in horror. "Master Emyrs!" she shouted, leaning down and shaking him, looking nearly on the verge of tears. "Master Emyrs! Are you all right?! This is all my fault; I never should have asked you for help! Master Emyrs!"

There was a low groan from the man, and then he lifted a hand next to his hood. "Oh, my head," he said. "Inter-dimensional travel has always been rather tricky. I'm afraid that I might have brought us to the wrong time when those men started shooting arrows and ice beams at us."

"Master Emyrs!" the girl said in relief. "I was so scared that you were––were––"

The man rubbed his hands over his face. "C'mon, I don't die that easily. Those men aren't nearly as scary as Kilgharrah. I'm more worried about the poison they laced our food with when we stayed at the inn."

"Kilgharrah the dragon?" the girl asked. "I thought that Kilgharrah was just a story!"

The man huffed in amusement, bracing his arms beneath him and standing up to his full height. "You ignore the part about maybe dying of poison to ask me about the mythical dragon who may not be a myth after all," he said. "Typical."

The girl smiled. "Well, if you want, I could cry about the poison, but I have it on good authority that Master Emyrs doesn't like it when ladies cry."

The man squawked. "I'll have you know that there's a very good reason for that having to do with a certain queen of Camelot and an egotistical unicorn who hates my guts!"

The girl's smile widened, before abruptly disappearing. "Your eyes!" she gasped, reaching her hand toward the man's hood before pulling it back.

The man quietly cursed. "I was hoping you wouldn't notice," he said.

"You can't see!" the girl cried.

"No, I rather can't at the moment," he replied. "Speaking of which, since I can't see and I'm currently suffering from magical exhaustion––did we actually escape, where are we, and do you have any idea what year it might be? I was aiming for somewhere in Camelot when Gaius was still Court Physician, but I can't really be sure."

The girl chewed on her lip as she looked toward the main table. "Well, we're definitely in Camelot," she said.

"Any idea of the year?"

"Sometime during the reign of Uther."

"How do you know that?" the man asked. "Is there some poster on the wall with a royal decree or some such thing?"

"Um, no," she said slowly. "He's about ten yards in front of me. Staring."

There was a moment of silence.

"Oh crap," the man said with a sort of fascinated horror. "We're _inside_ Camelot's walls, aren't we?"

"Yes."

"Surrounding by people with swords, I assume?"

"Yeah, yeah, I see a whole lot of swords," the girl answered, eying the knights distrustfully and voice wobbling a little.

"And they look angry with us, don't they?" the man said in a flat tone.

"Yeah, pretty much."

The man leaned down. ". . . What do you think our chances are of running?"

"Not too good," she answered with a sigh.

The man straightened up again with a heartfelt, "Well, _drat_."

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Please Review; Constructive Criticism Welcomed!

To Be Continued . . .


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